


Weregild

by stateofintegrity



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 14:03:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21447391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: After the trouble he caused on Earth, Loki is taken back to Asgard and thrown into the dungeons. Thor visits him there and sets in motion a series of debts and payments.
Relationships: Loki/Thor
Comments: 2
Kudos: 44





	1. The prince of spells in a net of gold

(Old English: “man payment”), in ancient Germanic law, the amount of compensation paid by a person committing an offense to the injured party or, in case of death, to his family.

“… slip this strap in those gentle curving lips, here gag [him] hard,

A sound will curse the house,” – _The Oresteia_ by Aeschylus

* * *

The last time he had met the chaos-bright eyes of his brother - God of mischief to Asgard, war criminal to the mortal world - he had been escorting Loki as a prisoner. He remembers the feel of corded muscle under his fingers as he had moved the captive man to the Bifrost site, remembers Loki’s reluctance to take hold of the Tesseract. _What did you expect_?, Thor’s memory chides him. _Did you think he would reach for your hand when you were the one to manacle his wrists?_

Unbidden, the God of Thunder remembers back to those wild days when he had been learning to wield his powers. Loki would travel with him on journeys of exploration, slim fingers grabbing for his belt as Mjolnir launched them for the skies_. You will never reach for me with such trust again, brother. I was not the one to break the pact between us; why am I the one awake on a whole world of sleepers? Why am I the one in pain?_  
  
_You know nothing of pain, Odinson,_ he imagines Loki sneering. _You retain your titles, your freedom, the respect of all Asgard, while I am made the monster in the basement, prince of follies, a mistake hidden away from the light_.  
  
_You tried to rule an entire world_! Thor shoots back at the brother he has conjured in his mind, then feels his lips twist in a rueful smile. _Even when you are present only in my imagination, we argue._  
  
He lets his eyes move about his darkened chambers and knows they hold no rest for him this night. Leaving his bed, he moves through the palace hallways as though he is war-bound, stride long, purposeful, and utterly without a destination. The night-serving guards raise their eyebrows as he passes but say nothing to halt him or in greeting. _I must look thunderous indeed_, Thor thinks, _for them to step aside with such unseemly haste._ Another thought intrudes: _or, they see you as the man who brought back the traitor Loki_.  
  
A series of aimless circles deliver him to the door of his brother’s room. The closed door seems an affront. How many times had Loki sought to hide behind that thick slab of wood, too busy with his spells and books for Thor? How many times had he dared Loki’s enchantments, earning singed fingertips more than once, to rip the door from its hinges and drag his brother back into the world? _Bars stand between us now, brother, not mere hinges, and you were the one to seek them. Did you do so because you so longed for distance from me_?  
  
Once, a room of his own had been enough space for Loki and Thor had accepted that they were old enough that such privacy had been merited. At that time, he had recently discovered the joys of the bedchamber and when he wished just to sleep he could always count on his brother to let him in, to permit his presence at his side as he had when they were but boys. Thor rests a hand on the door to Loki’s room, wondering for the first time why Loki had always slept alone. _Why were there no bedmates for you, brother? And why did it never before seem strange to me that I could always take it for granted that I would find you alone with space for me?_ Loki’s doorway holds no answers. Without crossing the threshold, Thor knows what those chambers look like inside; he imagines the lonely objects within straining, seeming to yearn after their absent master. He knows even without a mirror that he wears the same look.  
  
_Brother, I miss your face._  
  
He does not seek to broadcast the thought on a thin, electric line of lightning; he can feel Loki imprisoned deep below the earth: hating, hurting, breathing captive air. Perhaps his spell-sent thoughts would not reach his brother anyway. The Allfather had closed the spell prince off from the powers he had used to such destructive ends. Thor had attended the ceremony of punishment at Odin’s orders. He will never forget the way the bones of Loki’s spine had arched and strained after what was being drawn up from his marrow and taken from him, the way he had silently screamed under the metal that muzzled him. “Kinder to have put his eyes out, or had his balls off,” Volstag had said later, keeping Thor company as he tried to drink away a vision that would come to feature so heavily in his nightmares. Thor had agreed; what had been taken from Loki - his strength, his spells - it had been to reach into those secret, hidden depths and plunder away what he had never bothered to protect, because he had never imagined it could be stolen.  
  
_I must go to him._  
  
_I will go quickly, now, and return before I realize that it is a mistake._  
  
He stops in his own chamber long enough to throw a cape about his shoulders; the dungeons are cold. He searches the room for some token that might give Loki comfort, but what gift would the captive take from the hands of the one who had delivered him to his cell?  
  
Emotions war in him, sending thorny branches of lightning across his chest plate and dancing through his hair: he walks dappled with his own violent light. Perhaps his self-made storm alters his vision; he sees nothing of the glassy cells he strides past, nothing of the dim, forbidding corridors carved by dwarven skill many millennia ago. Or perhaps it is only that his eyes are turned inward to thoughts of his brother. Has captivity worked a change in him? Robbed the shine from his skin? Dulled the blue black luster of his hair? Do his intelligent eyes retain their predatory light - beautiful and cruel - or has blankness come to reign in those dark orbs? Has the metal bit Thor had forced past his lips tarnished the silver of his trickster’s tongue?  
  
Thor surfaces from such thoughts only when an obstruction is raised in his path. Odin’s gold- cloaked guards are clustered together. The laughter bubbling from their throats is sinister, thick with something ugly. Thor pushes through them without registering the fear that blossoms in their eyes at his arrival, walking like a warrior and like a prince.  
  
“By the Allfather’s missing eye!” He swears, and then he pivots on one heel and Mjolnir punches through palace stone to find his hand.  
  
“You did this?” He roars at the white-faced guards. “You dare make a Prince of the realm an object for your amusement?”  
  
The dungeon air begins to smell scorched; lightning dances about Mjolnir’s mighty head.  
  
“He isn’t a true prince,” one of the braver guards offers. “He’s a Jotun. Besides, after all the damage he’s done...”  
  
A single word issues from the God of Thunder. “Run.”  
  
They flee.  
  
He allows them to make it ten paces. Twenty. They are above the dungeon in the night air when the wicked wedges of light catch them.  
  
When their screaming reaches a pitch that satisfies him, Thor lowers his hammer to end the spell and smashes through the glass cell with his bare hands.  
  
Inside, Loki is wound about with a series of elaborate bonds. Impossibly fine links of gold slither across his skin, hissing possessively. The primary chain hangs from a loop in the ceiling, glinting, each link thick and honey colored. It runs down from on high to attach to leather belt that encircles Loki’s slim and naked waist. The combination of glowing metal and supple leather holds him suspended, breeches sliding from his hips. A collar decorates his long white throat and forces his head upright. Fastenings in the floor keep both arms outstretched, moored to the dungeon floor. The muzzle still covers his mouth.

The loops and chains binding his hands are as honeyed as the main contraption; there is something terrible about the beauty of the craft that went into them. _How diseased must be the minds who thought to pervert the pleasant shine of that precious metal_, Thor thinks, _to put it to such use_! He imagines the making of those chains, the soft beaten gold infused with dark purpose until it gleamed the color of poisoned honey. In bonds as precious and pretty as these, Loki is no mere captive; he is a spectacle, a rare prize taken and trussed to be devoured by the eyes set to watch him. For a terrible moment, Thor is as caught and as trammeled, as noosed and as yoked as the body he means to set free. He is frozen, entranced by the contrast between the dark fall of Loki’s hair, grown overlong in his imprisonment, and the bright gold. His betraying mind is overthrown enough by the unforeseen sight to whisper: _You are magnificent, brother..._  
  
Then Loki blinks; a clear bead of moisture slips from the corner of one eye. It glitters traitorously on the muzzle imprisoning his voice. This tangible sign of the depth of his hurt galvanizes the gaping God of Thunder. He surges forward and glass crunches beneath his boots. Loki closes his eyes and hangs his head as Thor draws near to dismantle the elaborate snare with his bloodied hands. “Good,” Thor tells him. “There is no need to watch this, brother.”  
  
Once Loki is free, Thor wraps him in the oxblood folds of his cloak. They stop only once, before the steaming forms of the downed guards.  
  
“Brother, we will never speak of this again, but I must know. Did they dare to touch you with anything more than their filthy eyes?”  
  
Loki shakes his head.  
  
Thor’s mouth is set and grim. “Then if they survived the touch of the lightning they may live.” He speaks the verdict in a voice worthy of Odin before drawing Loki into his arms and taking to the sky.  
  
***

“This is not Asgard,” is the first thing Loki says when they touch down. He can still feel the chains snaking over his skin – fine and cold and ceaseless as sand in their movements – and he rubs his arms.  
  
“No.” Thor leaves him standing in the center of the unfamiliar room, his naked torso still enveloped in his cloak.  
  
“What... What is this place?”  
  
Thor is on his knees at work on a fire. Usually he would rely on his powers, but he has already expended a great sum of energy in his attack on the guards and in transporting the two of them away from Asgard.  
  
Unaccustomed to a body unweighted by bonds, Loki takes a few cautious steps around the small dwelling. He finds a spring house filled with fruit and what he takes to be wine or mead. Cupboards hold a few mismatched cups and platters as well as trencher-thick bread, nuts, honey, and spices.  
  
“You have not the magic to do this,” he tells Thor’s back, frustrated by the mystery. Better to think on it than what he has only so recently escaped. “Who has prepared this place?”  
  
The God of Thunder rises and settles a hand on Loki’s shoulder, hearing a faint note of panic in his voice. “Calm yourself, high-heart. This place is mine, a place to go when I wish to be alone. Distant villagers tend it and refresh its goods at need. However, they will not come without permission when they see the smoke from our fire. You need not fear unwelcome eyes.”  
  
Loki’s eyes close, dark lashes resting on pale cheeks, and Thor knows he is remembering the leering looks of the guards, the words they had hurled at him like stones.  
  
The fire burns fiercely for a moment, greedily drawing logs down its green and yellow gullet. When it burns down a bit, Loki comes to sit before the flames. He looks at them instead of Thor when he says, quietly, “You know that it could not have been done without Odin’s knowledge. His consent.”  
  
“_That _is why we are not on Asgard.”  
  



	2. The Prince of Spells and the Yoke of Duty

“Of your own free will try on the yoke of fate,” – _The Oresteia_ by Aeschylus  
  
For the next two days they rest in a haven that Loki never knew his brother had and Thor hovers over his brother/criminal/recovered captive.  
  
“You still peck at your food as you did when we were children, brother,” he teases over a late meal.   
  
Loki’s pretty mouth twists. “So you still use such a title? Did you not hear them in the dungeon, Thor? I am a Jotun! A monster.”  
  
A strange expression, bright as Vannaheim’s sun-throat flowers, greets his outburst.  
  
“Why are you smiling?”  
  
“It is good to see your strength returning, brother. I feared it would take weeks before you felt well enough to spar with me.”  
  
Loki glares at him, annoyed at being easily read.   
  
“But to answer your question, there is no name you could give yourself that would surprise me or frighten me or drive me from your side.”  
  
“You left me in those dungeons,”  
  


“Because your eyes showed only black hatred for me, not because you bear Jotun blood!  
Dwarf or dark elf, serpent of the seas or terror of the skies, I do not care. I sought to give you time to lick your wounds alone, but to me you are only always and ever Loki.”  
  
Loki shakes his head - angry, bewildered, and amused. “Words were supposed to be my gift. It seems you have learned something of their power, brother. But even if I am not a monster in your fond and foolish eyes, I am still Odin’s mistake. You cannot keep me here forever, but I do not think you mean to let me go.”  
  
The spell prince cannot know it, but Thor had spent a sleepless night confronting the very problem Loki now voices. It is a thorny plight, the sort meant to vex heroes and then reward them at the solving, and he has bloodied himself many times before settling on an answer.  
  
“You will go, brother, but not back to that cage on Asgard. You will go and I will go with you. To Earth.”

***   
  
Of course, it is one thing to announce a bold plan to see Loki make amends for the damage he has caused. It is quite another to secure the needed permissions. Thor begins with his father.

  
“Where is your brother?” the Allfather demands when he returns.   
  
“He is safe.”  
  
“Safe? No realm is safe with Loki loosed from his cell. You knew that once or you would not have brought him here.”  
  
“I brought him home, father, because he is a prince of Asgard and whatever his crimes he did not deserve to be tried by mortals. I would not have brought him if I had realized what sort of trials awaited him here.”  
  
Odin makes a dismissive gesture, but he makes no effort to deny his knowledge of what Loki has undergone. “A few overzealous guards. He might have been humbled - and well he needed it!- but he was not harmed.”  
  
Thor glowers and distant thunder finds its voice. “Would you have said the same if they had found the courage to enter the cell and _take him_!?”  
  
Odin stands unruffled by the storm winds that have come to dance attendance on their lord. “Loki lowered his own value. I meant him to be the King of Jotunheim, to bring a lasting peace. He chose a different path. If that path led him to suffering, he was the one who placed his feet upon it.”  
  
“He was _your son_! Not a pawn, not some bit of planning gone astray!”  
  
“I do have plans for my children, Odinson. And my plans for you do not include defiance!”  
  
“I will tell mother.” The words come quiet, calm, _certain_. At the sound of them, Odin blanches and Thor knows he has won. “I will describe for her those golden chains - so pale that stolen stars must have been beaten into the metal. She may wonder of course - I certainly did - where a few lowly overzealous guardsmen gained the wealth to acquire such treasure. There may be a simple answer, of course. Perhaps Asgard’s finances are mismanaged and we’re overpaying the help... or perhaps those chains came from a dwarf hoard.” He smiles to drive home the next words. “There’s only one God amongst us clever enough to plunder one of those.”  
  
“You will have your fool brother then - let whatever evils he does be on your head! - but you will not have the throne.”  
  
Thor smiles again, broad and cutting. “Keep it. It seems to have an ugly effect on those who sit in it.” He begins to walk away.  
  
“If you call for help it will go unanswered!” Odin shouts at his back.  
  
Thor ignores the threat. “We’ll need his powers back, too.”  
  
“You are making a grave mistake, Odinson.”  
  
“Probably,” Thor admits, hefting Mjolnir. “But I think it will all work out.”  
  
  
***  
  
For the next step in the plan, Thor decides that it will prove easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission. He enlists Darcy to help him acquire a dwelling place and Midgardian garb, then marches Loki to the first of many construction sites. “This is a paltry use for my powers,” Loki complains when Thor explains what he intends, but the feel of Mjolnir at his back proves persuasion enough. They work in darkness, restoring bent girders and banishing scorch marks; it is not enough, Thor knows. Mended masonry cannot stand in for spilled blood or lost lives, but it is what they can do, so by night they repair and by day he stands guard over Loki.  
  
It takes three and a third weeks before stories began appearing in the _Times_; it takes six hours after the first report for company to arrive at their door. They circle and shout like hounds baying for blood; Thor is the strange calm in the center of the storm they make. To no one’s surprise, Stark is the first one to speak. “I would ask you in what universe this seemed like a good idea, but I don’t really want the mythology lesson. Let me just break it down for you: bringing him back here is _not_ a good idea.”

He softens, however, when Pepper suggests that he might use this as an opportunity to pilot some surveillance tech he’s been working on.  
  
For her part, Nat wants to pilot some torture techniques the Russians taught her last time she was in their company – and she wants to do so with Loki for a test subject. Clint is the one to rein her in with a touch on the arm, pointing out that Loki was under the influence of the Tesseract. “I’m not apologizing for him,” he says. “But I know what that thing can do to scramble your brain. If Thor can keep him on his leash, I’m not opposed.”  
  
Thor pales at the word “leash;” he remembers Loki dangling from the golden hook, pale skin shining, choker tight on his throat.  
  
“Where is he now?” Banner demands. Just how long is this leash?”  
  
Thor nods toward the closed door of a bedroom. “He is asleep,” he says. “And bound to Mjolnir. He isn’t going anywhere.” He doesn’t tell them that the muzzle Loki is currently wearing is just an illusion for their benefit.  
  
“They may wish to see you,” he had told the trickster. “And you will antagonize them if you can. Better that they imagine you can’t speak.”

Loki had not fought him on the suggestion, but his eyes had flicked to Mjolnir. “But the chains on my wrists will be real.”  
  
“Yes. You must earn your freedom.”

Much debate follows until Thor cracks his knuckles and draws himself up to his full height. He flashes his most charming smile. “Friends, you can watch over us. I ask only the time to make amends and search for a dwelling place in one of the nine realms. I will stand surety for my brother.”  
  
“Having some of the damage repaired _will_ take pressure off of the Avengers,” Cap offers. “The press has been positive and we’re saving the taxpayers some money.”

Stark rolls his eyes. “Mr. Truth, Justice, and the American Way. And what happens when Lokus-Pocus waves his hands and disappears to come back with something worse than the Tesseract? Shouldn’t we bring S.H.I.E.L.D. in on this?  
  
“This is in house business,” says Cap. As a living legend, he’s listened to more often than not.   
  
“Put a clock on it at least,” Stark grudgingly agrees.  
  
From then on, they work under watchful eyes. The Avengers even bring in Dr. Strange to corral Loki’s magic if need be.  
  
“Earth has wizards now?” Loki asks Thor.  
  
Thor shrugs.  
  
  



	3. The Prince of Spells and the Price to be Paid

“Clytemnestra: Where then the price that I received for thee?

Orestes: The price of shame…” – The Oresteia by Aeschylus

* * *

The penance that Thor has chosen leaves Loki with little time to focus on the man who took him prisoner, then liberated him from his cage. They live together in a strange harmony; Loki keeps their quarters clean and Thor cooks simple dishes that he learned on campaign as a youth. Using magic - his own, not fueled by the Tesseract - on Midgard is exhausting. While he rests, Thor researches other realms with Strange’s help. They never speak of the cage, the rescue, or what Thor gave up to recover his brother.

They return early one night and Thor stalks through their borrowed home without turning on the lights. He pauses before a window, sickly my moonlight robbing the color from his face.

Once, just a few short days ago, Loki would have delighted in the sight of his brother in pain. It holds little savor tonight. “You look grim, brother,” he says to Thor’s back.

“Our work here is almost complete.”

“Have you come to fancy Midgard so?” He is about to jab him about the girl Jane but Thor speaks first.

“I am afraid to lose you.”

He leaves Loki shocked, staring, and does not place Mjolnir outside of his door to keep him penned in. Loki is so startled that he does not take advantage of his newfound liberty to cause trouble. He lies to himself and days he does not want to run afoul of the Hulk and his friends.

***

On one of their last nights on Midgard, Thor appears with the muzzle.

Loki shrinks back from the hated device, eyes fiery and fierce.

“I need to speak with you,” says the God of Thunder.

Loki refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is shaking. “You are taking me back to Asgard.”

He summons his knives to his hands.

The lights in Thor’s summer bright eyes go out under a sudden swell of pain. “No, Loki. Whatever betrayals and shadows lie between us, you must know that I would never deliver you to anyone that would...would...” he cannot speak the words.

“Snare me in golden webs and dangle me from the ceiling as bait for their lecherous servants?”

Thor flinches, eyes squeezing shut. _Forgive me_. “I will never give you over to Asgard. Never again. But I need to speak to you.”

Loki glares at the muzzle. “Trading words between us requires this?”

“Please - let me? Trust me?”

_Damn you_. He submits and looks at Thor with dark and helpless eyes as the mechanism slips over his mouth.

“I will remove it, brother, but I must speak first and I would have you hear it without your jibes.”

Loki cannot fault him there; he has ever jested his way through serious moments. He nods Thor on, stripped of one of his best weapons: his sharpened tongue.

“Before we leave this place, there are words you must hear. Words about the night I found you in that cage.” His mighty hands clench, strangling the very air. “Would that I had come to you sooner.”

Loki holds his eyes with his own. Fool. _All that I have done and you crave **my** forgiveness_?

Thor seems to reach down inside of himself for strength. “Loki, I looked on you in that cage and I felt what your guards felt. I am sorry to share even this with them and would beg your pardon. I wanted to keep it from you but could not. You will go free from this place...but not without this knowledge.”

Loki gapes. He had expected some sort of noble apology for allowing Loki to go astray, for placing him always in his shadow without even realizing he had done so. _What madness is this_? He reaches for his powers, scanning Thor. Had the Tesseract done something to him?

Thor smiles at the feel of Loki’s magic sliding over his body like a snake looping itself over the branch of a tree. “You may cease your spying. I speak only the truth, brother. I am sorry if it is a truth that discomfits you.” He steps forward and removes the muzzle.

“Why would you tell me this?” _I certainly never would have guessed._

“Has our time here taught you nothing? I believe mistakes must be paid for in full.” His eyes are desperately bright. “Tell me brother, Those guards... what price would you have exacted from them if the Allfather had not warded your gifts?”

He speaks without hesitation, rage rising in him. “I would have opened their skulls and set vipers feeding on their brains.”

“I shared their sin, brother.”

“You would let me harm you? After all you have done to defeat me and protect this realm?”

He speaks a word of Asgard, a law they have known since birth. “Weregild, brother. A price for the shine of your flesh, for not turning my eyes... for the way I rose between my legs.”

“You left that part out.”

“In full, I said. Now that you know, make the punishment worthy.”

Loki whispers, unconscious of the words falling from his lips until Thor answers. “You took from me that which I would not have freely given and I was helpless to say no.”

“Aye.”

“If the guards had not been there, what else would you have taken?”

Thor’s eyes clench shut.

“Oh, so you imagined it.” He is confident now. He knows exactly how Thor’s honor must have him twisted; he knows how to drive this knife in deeper.

“Yes. I would have meant to free you, only, … only I would have been the helpless one.”

Loki knows how he should be taking advantage of the situation. He should be running, testing every inch of the shields Thor has woven into this place. Webs of lightning crackle invisibly around the apartment, but subtlety has never been Thor’s gift. He will have missed a spot. Loki stands frozen. He is too wound up and bound up in boundless possibilities. He stares at Thor and Thor stares back, awaiting his word, expectant but not alarmed.

Loki wonders at that expression. Can he wear it because of Mjolnir? Because he truly is of kingly stock? Loki remembers the way his mouth twisted beneath the muzzle. How can Thor deliver himself over to captivity with so assured a look?

“How do you know I won’t leave you bound and humiliated and run?” he asks.

“It’s a risk,” Thor agrees.

_Is this what it means to be the firstborn? To be so golden and assured that you just assume everything will work out in a way best suited to you? Or is it that you imagine that your great beauty will stay my feet?_

A smile transforms Thor’s face; he casts his voice out like a lifeline of golden thread. “You are thinking too much.”

Reassurance lives in Thor’s voice – there is trust in the heart of his words, impossible as that seems - but it is a taunt, too, a gadfly sting to Loki’s long neck, a way of forcing him to move.

“I have decided on my price.”

“Name it.”

He gestures at the earthly garments covering Thor’s skin. “You will need to do away with... all of that.”

Loki expects pride, preening; Thor’s beauty is legendary in all nine realms. But the hammer-bearer’s eyes are hooded as he divests himself of his clothes. _You really are trying to give yourself to me as I was given. Are you ashamed for what I endured... or shamed because you felt desire for one such as me?_

He decides that it does not matter. This is the only reparation we will ever receive for the way the guards allowed their eyes to feast on his flesh, for the threats they spoke in the deep night. He should welcome it. Relish it.

“Now on your back,” he tells Thor, earning an uplifted brow. _What, brother mine? Did you think that the language of command belonged to you, alone?_

Thor obeys without even sparing a look for the uncomfortable carpet, then looks up for guidance.

“Place your hands here.” He demonstrates the gesture himself and is surprised to feel heat coming off his hands. _I am as affected by him as those damn mortals. Then, perhaps I always have been._

To disguise such intrusive thoughts, he walks around the treasure offered to him, appraising. If Thor sees him swallow hard, he doesn’t show it; the naked god meets his gaze and makes Loki confess in the most secret center of his mind that to cover such muscled shining with ropes or bonds would be a something akin to a sacrilege. He staves off the impulse to call up his powers and bind Thor; the temptation is real enough, but he can maintain his position of control without such crude trappings. Why mar the view?

His voice is another matter; long seconds die as he steadies it before speaking again.

“Now hold yourself open.”

Thor obeys, but rosy light gilds his cheekbones. _Embarrassed, brother_? Loki wonders. _Ashamed? Neither will serve you well in my web._

Loki steps forward until he stands between Thor’s legs. He can see each delicate hair, feel the heat rising from exposed skin. Perversely, he wishes for his staff and the Tesseract. _Could you endure it, brother? Are you God enough to have such power plunged inside of you? Would you scream for me to stop... or would you just scream my name?_

He doesn’t regret the loss of the Tesseract’s hold over his mind. He might regret that he used it to make pitiful mortals kneel on Midgard streets when he might have used it to bend the mighty Thor... in his own chambers.

Thor smiles up at him, an unusual look for so vulnerable a captive. “Is this sight then all that you wish? I can pay a better tribute, brother.”

He pretends to be unmoved by the offer Thor makes with his whole body. “Isn’t there a Midgard warning about casting pearls in the dirt?”

The smile grows and Thor pretends to chide. “Brother, brother... I am the God of _Thunder_. Surely you have heard that my spendings glitter with rainbows.”

Loki has never heard Thor joke about the silly legends bandied about regarding his sexual prowess; the effect - along with those laughing eyes of his - is very pleasing.

“So it’s not pearls you’re offering to cast before my feet but...?”

“Opals.”

“Ah. Well, I’m not going to turn down rainbows.” The words are sarcastic, of course, part of the verbal play/ verbal warfare that has ever marked their relationship, but his desire is real. If Thor is willing to play this part, he is eager to be his audience.

Thor smiles and shocks the spell prince by offering his fingers. “A little help?”

At another time, he would have feigned disgust that Thor would ask so base a thing of him, but he remembers him saying “... I would have been the helpless one...” and so is made helpless himself. His knees bend of their own accord and he takes the moment to magic his Midgard clothing back into his typical garb. _Let it be me, the true me who does this._

On his knees with those too-familiar fingers in his mouth, he wonders if Thor did this just to get him to draw near. Which is not to say nearness doesn’t enhance the whole experience. Mjolnir might be short of haft, but her bearer certainly isn’t; Loki’s dark eyes fix on the thick veins beneath the soft skin, skin Thor has already gathered with his free hand.

In his curious, boyhood years Loki had often wondered why Thor looked different between his legs than he did; why had Odin and Frigga left one son in his most natural state (an Asgardian preference from what Loki could tell) and altered the younger? As with so many things, he had never asked. Wiser now in the ways of his true self, he guesses the difference to stem from culture; his Jotun forebears had marked him as their own before casting him into the wastes to freeze with crystals of ice in his lungs.

The sound of Thor’s digits – damp from his mouth – sliding over warm flesh ejects him from memories and grudges alike. He pulls away as Thor grips himself but a throaty murmur stills him. “_Stay_.” He remembers the promise he made and adds, “If it will please you.”

If. Loki almost laughs. As if anyone looking on this could be otherwise! But Thor is sincere; Loki can still read his eyes and there is hope in those summer-warm seas, hope and a measure of pleading.

_I could stand now_, he realizes. _I could walk away_. **_It would shatter him._**

Thor is unraveling quicker than Loki expected him too; a few strokes and his body is rocking against the floor as storm sparks dance across his eyelashes and in his hair. He tries to hide as the end approaches.

“Open your eyes,” Loki urges. _Look on me and see your unmaking._

“Loki,” he gasps out and Loki’s bones shudder, vibrating under the force of distant thunder.

It turns out that the smug bastard wasn’t even lying about the rainbows.


	4. The Prince of Spells and the allure of lightning

“Nothing forces us to know / What we do not want to know / Except pain” – Aeschylus, _The Oresteia _

On their last day on Midgard they burn the chains and metal bit in one of the incinerators in Stark Towers. Pepper is the one to get them the key; she understands ritual, symbolism— and pain and need most of all. They stand without speaking and watch the past burn down.  
  
“You’re free now,” Thor tells him when the fire dies. “Do you need me to say the rest?”  
  
“That wherever I go, if I bring pain and death, thunder will follow? I know.” _I have learned_. “Where will you go, brother?”  
  
Thor does not have his gift for conjury; he describes the simple plot of land he has chosen in plain words (Loki used to taunt him for speaking like a soldier but he does not do so now) and Loki can see it in his eyes.   
  
They have never been good at farewells; Loki shimmers and fades and Thor is left with a handful of magpie feathers and the feel of his magic on his skin; he wants to chase after the taste of his lips but settles for a rueful smile. He knew Loki would not stay. He holds onto the things he saw in his eyes when he paid his tribute and wonders if Loki read the truth of him in those moments. _Perhaps I owed you the words, dear one, but **that **price was too high for me_.

He raises his hammer and is drawn into air, then through atmosphere, through space. The journey is long and tiring and when he arrives it is enough to channel a bit of warding through Mjolnir and collapse, lying down with regret - but not surprise. He has always known he would set everything aside for Loki - lose everything for Loki - and maybe, in losing, have nothing but a hand’s clasp of ashes to show for all of his nobility and sacrifice. It’s all Loki thought them worth. He strokes the dark-unto-purple feather he saved and pins it to the wall above the bed, its darkness like a door left open.  
  
Three days pass and he is staring out at foreign stars when he feels his ward fail; something slips through the pale lines of electricity like a cold wind, suffering nothing, freezing their blue and crackling voices in their throats. He should reach for Mjolnir but he goes as still as his powers, listening, hoping, aching not to hope.  
  
Loki’s steps made no sound on the wooden floor; his footfalls have always had an under-stitching of shadow. Thor faces away, seems more statue of a god than a man, and pain jolts through Loki’s fingers at the softness of the shirt he wears; the desire to gather up the folds of fabric is so strong that it hurts him. There is another, unexpected advantage to Midgard clothing that raises its estimate in Loki’s mind. If Thor had been dressed in his armor or some other Asgardian finery, he would have been unreadable. This soft, clinging stuff shows the muscled planes of his back; every muscle is tight with strain. No one has ever been hungry for Loki’s presence before. He curses himself for focusing so much on winning the regard of Odin and his vain, petty, squabbling court that he missed the way Thor relishes his nearness... even in uncertainty.  
  
_Oh, brother. You are **trembling**._  
  
This delicious knowledge does not change his tone of course, does not cause him to abandon the script he fashioned for these moments.  
  
“It was typical of you, you know, the way you chose to pay the price. You swept in, blinded me with all that deadly radiance that flickers through you, made sure all of the dents were hammered out of your honor, and off you go again, still golden. Still shining.”  
  
Thor whirls, just as Loki had intended, and his eyes are wild as he rushes to do away with any injustice he caused (however obliviously). When they sparred as youths Thor had often injured his slighter brother (at least, until Loki came into his magic and learned the serpent’s stillness... and its strike) but upon realizing what he had done (sometimes hours after the fact) he would sit and bind the wound or clean and stitch the cut for as long as the process took, impossibly gentle - an oaf made into an angel in those moments. Thor does not know it, but he has always been at his most beautiful with his brother’s blood on his hands.   
  
“You think I wronged you?” The word “again” is not spoken, but they both hear it.  
  
“No, but you assumed that you were the only one who transgressed. I, too, have a dark confession, if you will have it from my lips.”  
  
_I would have anything your beautiful mouth sees fit to bestow upon me_, Thor thinks, but he only nods, unsure if Loki is with him or if this is just projection, illusion. The magic user had warned him he could humiliate him. His hunger is such that he knows he will court any humiliation.   
  
“Those guards,”  
  
The mere mention of them brings whiteness to Thor’s lips, a tightness to the corners of his eyes.  
  
“I could almost envy them their ends.” He drops every shield he’s ever crafted and allows Thor to see every truth. “Impaled on a pole of living light.”  
  
Thor loses his warrior’s grace; his heart speeds up and it trips him and he is looking at Loki with such wistfulness that Loki almost casts a spell to freeze him just so he can enjoy this most unexpected of looks. “Loki? Are you asking?”  
  
Loki starts toward the bedroom, moving slowly enough to see the world shatter in Thor’s eyes when he imagines he’s fallen for another trick, when he imagines himself destroyed by the very ammunition he crafted and gave over to Loki’s treacherous hands. “Why don’t you come with me and find out?”  
  
Thor doesn’t think it’s magic - the way he ends up on his back with arms full of lithe, shifting Loki, spell caster’s fingers buried in his shirt, caressing it and tearing it off at the very same time. Perhaps a word like “impaled” should have alerted him, but things accelerate at a pace that makes him sweetly dizzy and he’s much more under Loki’s control than the trickster ever was in his muzzle and bonds. Those pale fingers are everywhere- undoing his pants, taking him out – and Loki presses sharp and venom-stinging little kisses to his throat, his mouth impossible to catch and pin.

“… too fast…” Thor tries to warn him off of the course he has set, but panting breaths obscure most of the words. “ … don’t want to hurt…”

Loki doesn’t heed him – when has Loki ever listened? – but he does register the fear in Thor’s eyes enough to reassure him that there is a spell for easing the way. Thor feels the spell on his skin – oil slick, warmed – but mostly he feels Loki, breakneck pace and determination, taking him on, taking him inside.

There may be a spell that deals with this sort of spatiality: how to fit the slightly curved, long, divine mass of Thor’s need-slathered cock inside of him, but Loki doesn’t know it. Besides, he wants the pain of it. More, he wants the truth at the heart of that pain. As he understands it, love and pain are petals on the same dark rose, scents tangled; if Thor hurts him, then _this_ must be real. If he is willing to bear pain in Thor’s name... well, that is his tribute. Loki tries to avoid discomfort- never mind outright suffering - even when it’s to his advantage. But he will hurt for what he loves, and laughter will sing out from his trickster’s tongue – an unexpected truth.   
  
“You cannot,” Thor tries to tell him when he begins to rock his hips.  
  
They aren’t slow, these motions of his. Like the dark need to prove himself - his consuming, second son’s hunger - he needs to devour Thor like this. He needs to feel him sheathed completely, even if he has to break apart to see Thor fully home.   
  
The God of Thunder won’t thrust, of course. His hold on himself - his restraint is terrible to behold, divine strength channeled into denial. Loki knows the lightning is at warm rest - summer-ing - in the center of Thor’s bones. He wants to feel it dancing across his back. He wants it to nestle into the curve of his neck and accelerate his pulse. He just has to call it out.  
  
“You can move,” he wants to tell Thor, but the act of driving himself down on what feels as much like star-crafted metal as it feels like flesh has driven the air from his lungs and left them aching after it as he aches around Thor, a _longing_-aching; even _his_ silver tongue needs air to form words.  
  
Then, suddenly, some barrier held sacred between them both until Thor saw him trussed in black leather and gold gives way. Thor is inside, completely, and Loki is still, learning the feel of him, adjusting, welcoming. When the sparkling fragments leave his vision (not _Thor’s_ lights, not yet) Loki is surprised to see Thor looking upon him with wonder and affection. Are his aurulent lashes _wet_? Loki almost asks if he has hurt _him_ when Thor says, “No one … no one has ever take me so quickly. Or so well.”

Loki likes the compliment (even if accepting it means acknowledging certain godlike dimensions… which are hard to forget in his current position, anyway). What he could do without is the reference, however subtle, to the fact that others have echoed his position. Well, others may have been here before him, but Loki intends (as always) to be the one who is remembered. He raises himself, surprising Thor with his strength, before slamming down in a motion that feels (at least to some part of Thor) like an attack. Lightning answers the dancing deftness of his body and he _does_ laugh, delighted to win that longed-for light. Sparks spiral around him and he imagines that every curve and sharp plane, every jagged bit of him, is being tempered by warm stars.

More white than blue, Thor’s eyes are too wide, aghast and enraptured. “How much can you take?” The words come out like an oath.

It is a question that must have special resonance in Thor’s life, Loki imagines. How gentle he must have been with past partners, their bones like bits of porcelain in his huge hands. Who, after all, could match the strength of a god? But Loki is a match for all that Thor is and ever was. “I only ever wanted to be your equal!” he had screamed into that beautiful, noble face once, but even though he does not have Thor’s strength or Thor’s beauty, what he does seem to have is a moonlight beauty, a beauty that takes in Thor’s golden light and shines out in silver made to steal the breath. What he has is the strength to be refined and forged (over and over and over) by the hammer blows Thor is known for dealing. Thor could never break him.

The God of Thunder must be reaching the same realization because he makes no effort to corral the lightning Loki has loosed. Instead, he reaches sparkling –crackling? – fingertips to graze a cheekbone, to sift through the softness of his hair, to crown it with a blue-white radiance that shines like Jotun ice. His eyes have changed again; they hold a sort of dazed admiration – but the centers are liquid-dark; he’s begging without saying a word. “More?”

“More,” Loki agrees.

His teeth clack together when he gets it, but he doesn’t ask Thor to ease off or to stop. Eyes closed, he thinks of the times they’ve fought. This feels like those times – Thor’s relentless strength pushing him closer and closer to the edge of something more personal than the rainbow bridge from whence he once fell. He made no sound when he slipped over the side of the bridge but he cries out now, head thrown back. Thor registers the sound as though logging information. “Good,” he murmurs, angling his hips, looking to strike the same spot again. Realizing what Thor means to do, the trickster becomes almost frantic in his vulnerability. “Are you so eager to have done with me?”

Thor’s smile is too cocky to be believed. “I will never be _done_. I wish only to bring you pleasure. You did as much for me.”

_I didn’t even touch you_.

One huge hand comes to rest on his hip, holding him down on the cock sweetly torturing him with every second thrust; the other strokes up and down the length of his throat as if to eradicate the memory of the devices that had been bound there… or maybe to recreate it. Loki will never admit it – not in words – but he would suffer a collar if Thor held the rope.

“Why do you hold back, brother?” Thor asks into his neck, golden bristles brushing Loki’s naked cheek. “This will not be the last time.” Loki feels him smile. “It need not even be the last time tonight.”

_A future… Thor, do you understand what you’re giving yourself over to? What I am? _

Sensing something within him – when had Thor become so damnably perceptive? – the God of Thunder gentles his motions, pulls Loki close. “There is something else you wish?” He flashes a teasing little smile. “Some other dark confession?”

_There are **so many** of those_. “I would have… I would feel…” He wants to curse himself. When did he ever stumble over words? Trail off?

Thor places magic-bearing fingers at his temples. “Show me.”

Loki is rendered absurdly grateful, glad to be freed of the burden of speaking. With the aid of his brother’s magic, Thor lifts the images from his mind and pulses inside of Loki at the sheer eroticism. Thor has always stood in awe of Loki’s mind; he has never imagined its gifts being turned toward _this_. Loki does not want pleasure. At least, Loki does not want pleasure as a gift from him. He wants it as a shared ending, worthy of song, a journey taken side by side.

“You would have me spill inside of you,” he murmurs, delighted, disbelieving, without even realizing he’s speaking aloud. “And that will be enough, enough…”

_Enough to ruin me for any other touch, ever, _Loki silently finishes.

Thor is moving before the thought fades, hips pistoning; Loki expects to see sparks that have nothing to do with lightning and everything to do with friction and _speed_. He would jest about it if Thor wasn’t in such perfect alignment with _that place_.

_There. There. There. **There**_ **. **

His throat feels glass-scraped. He is probably screaming. Thor seems to welcome the strange, birdlike cries that can’t possibly be coming from him; he answers with a roar that makes thunder boom outside even though the sky is clear.

He is not begging. The heir of Jotunheim does not beg. This is a command. “Now. Now!” _Give this over to me, sear me with this sweetest lightning, and pay for all that you dreamed of taking._

Thor is still eldest son enough or soldier enough not to go against so direct a command. The lightning comes – a sheet, a blaze, a terrible joy – and Loki holds its blue-bright metal taste in his mouth and it is nothing like the muzzle, holds it until Thor slumps back, sticky with the truth that he has won.

Loki stays awake long after Thor succumbs to sleep, wrung out, contemplating the word with which the God of Thunder approached him. Weregild is meant to be paid _for_ the body’s brokenness; in the old and wild days of the gods, it was paid _with_ parts of the body – an actual eye-for-an-eye system.

_And now I have paid – I have given over my lust and my need and fantasies I never knew I had… and you answered all of it in kind. The debt should be cancelled. The bond broken._

_But I want **more**. _


	5. The Prince of Spells and the balance of power

“Strike the balance in all / and god will give you power.” - Aeschylus, _The Oresteia _

It is one thing to know hunger, to feel his abdomen draw tight every time it storms and be helpless against the lightning-flash of lust. But he will be damned if it trammels his steps. (That he has to think this tells him that he is already damned). Loki runs again, terrified of the depths of his own hunger. He flees from world to world with no thought of conquest – unless it is how to conquer the bright need singing through every vein.

Then, one day, without preamble, he gives up. He gives in. He returns to a small apartment on Midgard and walks in as if only a day has passed.

Thor’s mouth softens with surprise; is that sweet, summer lightning flashing in the darkening depths of his eyes? “Where have you been?”

_Trying to outrun the web you’ve woven around my heart, you oaf. _“Wandering.”

Odin’s son takes a step closer, wary, hoping. “What did you learn in your travels?”

Now _he_ is the one who has begun to softly shake. He wonders how he held out so long. He plays into a hunch, declares, “I learned I’m far more powerful than I ever thought.”

“Oh? You must be using your spells for good aims. I sensed no mischief.”

_I saved my mischief, brought it back for you. Now you can sink your teeth into it, feel the juice of it spilling down to dew the hollow of your throat, to shine on your naked chest. “_The power I speak of has little to do with magic.”

“And much to do with?”

“Resistance.”

“Oh?”

Loki has never been the sort to add gems to Thor’s already lustrous crown; perhaps this will convince Thor of all that he has undergone, all the ways he has been transformed. He throws back the black and green folds of his cloak and stands exposed in fibers woven tight to his skin. “Do you have any idea how excruciating it is to experience this _every single time it rains_?”

He would like to slip his fingers past his lips to be sure, but he is almost certain that Thor’s mouth has gone dry at the sight of him. He holds back a smile. Not that it isn’t quite a sight. On the day they were drawn, raw, from the earth the metals that went into the forging of Mjolnir were softer than he is now.

But as full as his eyes are with all Loki has put on display (willingly this time), Thor matches him. “As painful as searching every animate thing for your beautiful eyes? I think I have been bitten or stung or clawed by every species that calls Midgard home.”

Loki doesn’t mean to, but he laughs, delighted. “Bound to each other then.”

“Your return proves as much. Run as you will, the bond is true.” Finished with fine words, he draws Loki into his arms, crushes him against his body so that he can feel every time he rose in response to the rumble of distant thunder, every time he denied himself release as the rain beat down.

Loki surprises them both when he executes a dancer’s steps and ends up with his legs wound around Thor’s waist, letting himself be borne he knows not where. “I always imagined you scorned my strength,” Thor teases him.

“We have both believed our share of lies,” Loki answers.

Thor tilts his chin so that he can read the shifting tapestry of his eyes. “The nights you held yourself apart, remained alone…”

Loki just nods against his touch. Then, surfacing, he looks around. In the center of this mortal dwelling is a most mysterious structure: an open-walled wooden temple of sorts. It had no roof, but the connecting limbs are heavy with flowers that have never grown in Earth’s soil. Lilac and sugared seafoam, they sway and saturate the roof with scent.

Loki reaches up and tangles his fingers in them, struck by their pale yellow “tongues,” the texture of their petals. “These are Asgardian!” he declares. “What… what magic is this? You never showed a talent for plant-shaping before!”

Thor smiles and breaks a flower free, crowns his dark tresses with those so-pale petals. “I hungered to touch your living skin, to feel you – all life and power – shaking in my arms. I tried to conjure something that held something of your softness.” He indicates the clinging, twisting, stubborn vines. “And your strength. This was as close as I could come.”

Loki wants to retort that Thor is being vain if his memories are so intent on showing him only in a state of shaking, but he is more flattered than he dares admit. An idea flashes through his mind, a serpent slipping through the flowers. “Strong, you say?” The vines wind and furl at his command until he can lean back upon them as if in a hammock.

He knows that Thor has realized what he’s up to when he hears his pleased gasp. “Loki, you’re mad!”

It is a bit mad, perhaps – but also, to his mind, maddeningly fitting. Lilac blossoms begin to encircle his throat. “Perhaps I am misremembering your words, brother, so remind me. What was it you felt when you looked on me in that gilded cage?” Bit by bit, he had begun to deploy his magic. Pale flesh begins to show through clothing that has begun to fade away. His pulse thrashes in his throat, stirring the yoke of vines there. He knows Thor can see it.

“Rage,” answers the God of Thunder.

_Oh, it is to be a game, then? Delicious. _ He lets some of the fronds go limp, falling away. “Only rage? You stood before me only as a warrior? As one who would avenge the ill treatment I endured?”

The smell of the flowers intensifies. It takes a moment for Loki to realize why. A storm is rising. He rises with it.

“There was more.” Thor’s voice grates out. His throat is tight; perversely, Loki longs to be rammed home into that tightness. “Guilt, also, at having delivered you to such a fate as that. Pain rose in me when I regarded pain in you. It has ever been so.”

Loki remembers the feel of his cloak, the way it bore the warmth of his skin. “Nothing more? No wish to see my pain salved?”

Thor groans and sinks to his knees before him. “You would use that silver tongue on me like you use your daggers, baring me to the bone. Well you know what I wanted… how I longed to have you even with all of those terrible chains holding you bound.” His breath has become harsh; he almost pants, kneeling there, leveled by need. “It would have been so simple a thing – to push those breeches down past your hips. To take you while your bonds muffled your screams.” He swallows audibly. “I am sorry, brother, for the violence of my desire, for what I imagined doing to you.”

“Do it to me now.”

If asked anytime before that moment, Loki would not have been certain that he could summon his powers in such a way, weave so many threads of magic in such tangled and elaborate patterns. This time it was not gold that held him suspended – no golden ornament would ever again touch his skin – but living vines. Burning lines of pollen streaked his naked skin.

Thor launches himself to his feet with a growl. He is frightened. “Do you taunt me? Shame me for what I have so freely confessed?”

Loki closes his hands and the spell dies. He drops lightly to his feet before Thor and soothes him with a touch. “Peace, brother. I was trying to give you what you wanted. It bound us somehow. I don’t know why it took _that_ for us to see each other, but I cannot find it in myself to regret what followed.”

Thor is still trembling; a torrent of emotions sweeps through him and he cannot decide which signal to heed.

Loki tries another tack. “Thor, if I had known what you felt, watching me, if I could have summoned power enough to speak through that hated gag, I would have told you to take me.” He steels himself. “If I had ever believed for a moment that you could want me, I would have appeared in your bed whenever and however you wished it.”   
  
In answer, Thor kisses him everywhere, reckless, joyous in his need; Loki’s eyelids and ear tips sting under his enthusiastic ministrations. Loki has to resort to fending him off with flowers.   
  
“Do you believe me now, then? Trust me?”   
  
“Yes, dear one. I only feared to mingle our love with all you felt, alone in those chains.”  
  
Loki sends a flower twining to kiss his cheek. “It turns out, brother-mine, that there are no chains by which I would fear to be bound to you.”   
  
...   
  
When it is finished, wrecked blooms stick to sweat damp skin; fine grains of golden pollen glow in Loki’s dark hair.   
  
He’s on his back, eyes pleasantly seared by the lightning that he so recently rode; above a fading storm sends a soft rain to cool his skin.   
  
“What is this strange structure you’ve crafted?”   
  
“In the ancient language of Ikea, this is a ‘pergola.’ While waiting for your return, I watched much HGtv, brother.”   
  
Loki decides not to tell him how much he loves this strange open frame; inside of it, he was sheltered from the storm somehow even as it wracked him.   
  
But the bond is true and Thor seems to sense his pleasure. “Sleep here?” His voice is woozy, pleasure drunk as a bee that’s spent hours pollen-plundering.   
  
Loki knits their fingers together and holds tight. As he slips away, a new version of weregild rises in his mind, sends a smile playing over his lips. _An eye for an eye, brother? What use have we for that? But pleasure given for pleasure enjoyed? That is a price I can pay forever - willingly._


End file.
